Design critique
Running a design feedback session can be tricky. If not done well, it can easily end up with a lot of voices not being heard and designers feeling judged. But as an important part of any product development, we need to master this process, so we get constructive feedback and clear action points to follow up with.
Outcomes
- Quickly gather direct feedback from your team on concepts, wireframes, or high-fidelity designs
- Share competing concepts with your team for feedback
- Get different perspectives on your designs
What you need
| Remote | In person |
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Instructions
Most plays in this playbook involve minimal preparation. With the design critique, there is a small amount of preparation required to save time during the session and to keep things focused.
Preparation time will depend on the complexity and number of designs that need to be critiqued.
Prepare the designs
With the focus of the play being a design critique, it’s important to have the designs ready for critique in Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard if you’re running the workshop remotely. There are a few ways to share your designs in Miro – you can embed PDF’s, attach images, or even use a Figma plugin to link directly from a Figma board.
If you are facilitating the design critique in person, you can use the projector or screen to talk through the designs. You could also print smaller versions of the designs for people to place on their sticky notes with feedback.
Invite your participants
Participants in this session should be made up of the project team and any subject matter experts relevant to the project. This might include a Project Manager (PM), Project Officer, Designer, Business Analyst, Communications Officer, Solution Architect, or Developer. Aim for including a range of people to form a multi-disciplinary team. You’ll want to make sure when you send an invite for the session, that you clearly explain the goal, how long it’ll take, and why people’s participation will be beneficial.
It’s important to give enough notice to ensure participants have free time to come along to the session. Aim to send invitations about 2 weeks in advance.
You can also attach the play for people to look at ahead of time.
Calendar invite for design critique
Subject:
Join us for a design critique session for [project name]
Meeting description:
Hi [team name if sending a group invitation, or participant name if sending individual invitations]
We're in the early stages of design development for our [name of project] work and would love to have you give some feedback. In this session we will be reviewing early designs and concepts, and providing critique to direct further development.
The session will take about [x] minutes and there is no preparation required.
Having [you/each of you] attend will ensure the work is reviewed from various perspectives and help us to avoid missing any crucial considerations. We will be using Miro for this workshop, and you can read more about the design critique session in the Digital service design playbook.
I look forward to your contribution to the session. [If you’re planning to record the session include the following - We will be recording the session for learning and development purposes and record keeping. Please let us know before the session if you don't want to be included in the recording or transcript].
Kind Regards,
[facilitator name]
Introduction – 10 mins
Agenda overview
Summarise the agenda for the session.
Understand the problem
- Who is the target audience? Who uses this service?
E.g. For a UX design project the target audience was people who need to use the service to pay online. - What is the problem being solved? What have we learnt from user testing insights? What are frequent issues we get feedback on?
E.g. The problem of the UX design project was the complexity of the service experience. Customers were frequently forced to call for help rather than self-serve. - What is the value for the customer/business? Why is this project a priority? What impact will we see once we have released something?
E.g. A simple customer experience so they can process their issue as soon as possible. From a business perspective, this may encourage behaviour change for a better outcome. It will also help to reduce the volume of calls through the contact centre.
You can summarise this information from an impact map if one has been created for the project.
Roadmap overview
Describe the stage of the project you are in. If you are in the early wireframing stages, make that clear!
Feedback type
Make it clear what type of feedback you are looking for. If you're in the early stages of design, you won't want people commenting on alignment or colours.
The types of feedback you might want will fall in one of these categories:
- Getting ideas: You want ideas on conceptual work
- Detail feedback: You want detailed feedback on the product experience as a whole. For example, how the screens flow, connection to the goal and business strategy, interaction patterns etc.
- Quick feedback: You want to get quick, specific feedback on things like visual design, copy, colours and layout.
Let the critique begin! – 40 mins total
2a. Design walkthrough – 5 mins
Briefly explain your concept or design.
2b. Silent critique – 15 mins
The team will be providing feedback by using colour-coded sticky notes for the following:
- Liked
What parts of your concept or design do people like? - Ideas
What ideas do people have to improve the work? - Challenges
If people identify any potential issues with your work - Questions
If people aren't sure why you make a certain design decision, or they're not sure what something means.
Give people time to silently critique your work using the feedback matrix i.e. likes, ideas, challenges, questions. Ask participants to place their sticky notes over the part of the design they are referring to.
During the silent critique, group related feedback together to form themes.
2c. Discuss – 20 mins
Use the sticky notes to guide a discussion and encourage your team to elaborate on their feedback.
Wrap up – 5 mins
Thank everyone for their time and for their feedback. Let them know what to expect next, and if there are any follow-up activities.
If using this process as part of a larger workshop, move on to the next activity.
Now you should have a list of suggestions, ideas, and areas to potentially improve your design. Once you have actioned the feedback you can run this session again, or with key stakeholders to ensure their expectations are being met.
Resources
See below for a collection of templates and other pages which will help you run this play. These resources are also linked in the play instructions.
Subject:
Join us for a design critique session for [project name]
Meeting description:
Hi [team name if sending a group invitation, or participant name if sending individual invitations]
We're in the early stages of design development for our [name of project] work and would love to have you give some feedback. In this session, we will be reviewing early designs and concepts, and providing critique to direct further development.
The session will take about [x] minutes and there is no preparation required.
Having [you/each of you] attend will ensure the work is reviewed from various perspectives and help us to avoid missing any crucial considerations. We will be using Miro for this workshop, and you can read more about the design critique session in the Digital service design playbook.
I look forward to your contribution to the session. [If you’re planning to record the session include the following - We will be recording the session for learning and development purposes and record keeping. Please let us know before the session if you don't want to be included in the recording or transcript].
Kind Regards,
[facilitator name]
